


Why be Sad When You can be Even Sadder?

by Cerillen



Series: Chronicles of an Anxious Protector [6]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: But everything is working against him, Even though he's pretty sure they all hate him, Gen, He Cares So Much, He is also the softest of beans, Patton is a soft bean, Patton wants to give him the love he deserves, Protective Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Virgil deserves so much love, Virgil is also super overprotective of literally everyone, Virgil is terrifyingly fast and strong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 12:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15048914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerillen/pseuds/Cerillen
Summary: A new side with an interesting ability appears and Patton just wants to make a new friend.It's just too bad that he can't seem to convince the other side of that.





	Why be Sad When You can be Even Sadder?

Virgil appears one day as a surprise to the others when he just suddenly runs into the room while they’re watching Thomas on the tv and shouts at Thomas with his warped voice to make him stop when he almost walks in front of a moving car.

Patton is delighted by the new addition of a side that seems to have the ability to save Thomas from harm simply by shouting at him.

Logan and Roman, however, are not.

They are upset that there is a side that can control Thomas at will.

So they quickly learn to hate him and try to keep him away from themselves, each other, and Thomas.

Patton isn’t ok with that but Virgil leaves before he can say anything to defend him, and the others use that as extra evidence to argue against Patton on the matter.

So Anxiety becomes an outcast and Patton is incredibly sad about losing the opportunity to befriend the new kid.

Until, one day, he runs into him in the kitchen.

Or falls into him, as the case happened be.

Patton is tired and it’s late but he’s also thirsty so he finds himself in the kitchen drinking some water.

Once he’s finished with his drink he goes to leave the room but ends up tripping over air and falls onto something that is a lot softer, warmer, and higher up than the ground.

As it turns out, Virgil had been going around the house to make sure nothing was wrong with the others and had noticed that Patton’s door was open and the side was nowhere to be seen. So he’d focused for a second and just barely heard someone shuffling around in the kitchen downstairs and had gone to check on the moral side, just in case there was something seriously wrong.

By the time he reached the kitchen, Patton was putting his empty glass into the sink to be cleaned the next morning and was walking towards the entrance where Virgil was silently standing.

Virgil had planned on simply waiting until Patton left and just quietly watching him from the shadows as he returned to his room, but then Patton tripped and he found himself reacting without thinking.

Patton looked up after his fall and was surprised to see the new side, who he still didn’t know the name of yet, looking down at him with wide eyes and holding him carefully against his chest.

Not knowing what else to do in this situation, Patton spoke.

“…hello.”

And Virgil found himself responding without even meaning to, because what else was he even supposed to do in this kind of situation?

“…hi.”

“You caught me…”

“Yeah…sorry?”

Patton’s face scrunched up.

“What?”

And suddenly Virgil could move and think again and his brain was rapidly devolving into a panic because, oh my god I just caught morality I am holding morality I am holding one of the sides he is in my arms what is going on what just happened oh my gOD IM STILL HOLDING HIM I HAVENT LET GO YET WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME HE PROBABLY HATES ME LIKE THE OTHERS I JUST GRABBED HIM LIKE IT WAS NOTHING  **LET HIM GO _NOW!_**

So Virgil quickly let go of the moral side and tried to step back.

Except Patton was also holding Virgil around the waist.

So, while Virgil stepped back, Patton simply ended up being dragged forward alongside him.

There was a very quiet moment of silence as Virgil looked down at the side still attached to him with shock and Patton blinked a couple times in surprise as he found himself becoming a little more horizontal to the ground while he continued to look up at the one supporting him.

And then Patton started to lose his grip and slide down Virgil’s body and onto the ground and Virgil did the only thing he COULD do in that situation.

He picked up Morality.

He did his best to be careful and quick as he grabbed the side from under his armpits and pulled him up off the ground for a moment before carefully placing him onto his own two feet.

Patton was still loosely holding onto Virgil and blinking rapidly in surprise as he was placed down again.

And another moment of quiet occurred as Virgil looked at the hands holding onto his shirt, seemingly on reflex, and tried to figure out if he should simply try to break away from them and run or if he should ask Morality if he was ok.

In the end, he ignored his own fear and decided that making sure the other side was alright took priority.

As always.

“Um…”

Patton blinked, still simply dumbfounded by being picked up by the side that didn’t actually look like they had the strength to do such a thing so easily, and Virgil continued talking.

“Are you…ok, Morality?”

The moral side blinked a few more times in silence as Virgil waited with some concern slowly building in his chest.

Then it was like a switch had been flipped and suddenly Patton was alive again.

“OH!”

The shout startled Virgil so much he ended up pulling the other against his chest again in some sort of protective act of instinct and Patton let out a surprised squeak and a giggle before wrapping his own arms around the new side once again as well.

Virgil stared at him with surprise after darting his eyes around to check their surroundings for danger.

“Morality?”

Patton giggled a little more before settling again and sending Virgil a smile that made him kind of want to just curl up on the floor and cry a little.

“Sorry, kiddo. I was just surprised is all. I didn’t expect someone to catch me when I was falling earlier and I definitely wasn’t expecting you to pick me up either so I just couldn’t figure out what to do with myself for a minute there.”

“Oh, ok then.”

Virgil was now blinking at the cheerful side with some more surprise and confusion.

He had no idea what was even going on at this point.

It was at this point though that he realized he was still pretty much hugging the other side and he quickly released him once again.

And, thankfully, Patton let go as well.

“Thank you for that, by the way.”

Virgil scrunched his own face up, confused.

“What?”

Patton, if anything, only seemed to grin wider.

Virgil was pretty sure his soul was going to slowly leave his body if this kept up.

“For catching me. It probably would have hurt a lot if I’d actually fallen, so I really appreciate you being here to help me. So, thank you!”

Yup, his soul was now leaving his body and he was going to just collapse on the floor in front of the kitchen until someone finally came by to toss his corpse into the abyss where he belonged.

Maybe Morality would be so kind as to do it himself.

“Um…yeah. No problem. Don’t mention it. It wasn’t a big deal. I just didn’t really want you to fall and get hurt or anything…”

Virgil trailed off as he realized he was starting to ramble and Patton continued to smile at him.

There was a moment of very awkward silence.

Then Virgil remembered that the other sides actually hated him and he was supposed to be staying away from them not talking to them and touching them and being smiled at by them and he did what he probably should have done as soon as he put Morality down the first time.

“Well…bye.”

And the anxious side sunk into the floor and disappeared before Patton could even ask him his name.

“Oh…”

But that wouldn’t keep him down too long, Patton decided as he held up a fist with a determined expression on his face.

The new side was a lot nicer than the other two seemed to think, as Patton had been quite sure to be the case since he seemed to be here to protect Thomas to begin with, and he was now determined to make up for not giving him a proper welcome before by befriending him now.

So Patton got to work.

He kept an eye out for the side, watching his door whenever he had the chance and trying to keep an eye out for a flash of black or purple anywhere.

He even tried to spend more time in the common area at night in the hopes of catching him.

And he knew that he’d been there at some point.

Because, sometimes, he’d fall asleep waiting and would later end up waking up tucked into his own bed.

And when he’d asked the others how they’d slept that night, they never said anything about waking up, finding him, and taking him to bed.

Which left only one other person who could possibly be doing it.

So the new side was definitely coming out at night, but Patton still couldn’t find him and the other simply refused to come out when he called to talk to him.

It took two weeks before Patton finally came up with an idea he thought would work in getting the side to finally speak to him again.

He came down that night and waited for a while, as he always did.

And then he got up from his spot on the couch, hopped up onto the banister, and let himself fall.

There was a terrifying second or two where he thought that maybe he had miscalculated and the new side wasn’t around to catch him tonight and he would end up falling flat on his back and cracking his skull open or something, but then there was a blur of black and purple in the corner of his eye and he was suddenly resting in a set of very gentle arms that held him close to a chest that had a VERY fast heartbeat.

_**“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”** _

Virgil had almost just died.

If his soul hadn’t left last time, then it definitely did just now.

He’d been so confused when the moral side had gotten up and climbed onto the banister but he had never, not even once, thought that he would just fall off of it like that.

He’d been all the way in the kitchen one second and right beside the stairs in the next and his heart was pounding so hard from the adrenaline pulsing in his veins that he was pretty sure he was about to pass out from fear alone.

This wasn’t fair.

Why did he have to be the one to do this?

Why couldn’t he be like the others and just go to sleep at night?

And suddenly Morality was laughing and Virgil really just wanted to cry and go to bed because this was all just **SO** unfair.

“You caught me!”

Patton threw his arms around the other side’s neck and couldn’t help the delighted laughter that fell out of him in that moment.

He’d finally found him again!

The other side sighed and gave Patton the smallest of squeezes.

“Yeah…but why were you falling in the first place? What were you doing standing on the banister like that?”

Virgil wasn’t sure what explanation he was expecting the other to give, but it was not what he ended up receiving.

“I was trying to get your attention again.”

Morality seemed slightly embarrassed but mostly just obstinate as he stared Virgil down for a moment.

The new side blinked.

“What?”

Patton looked away.

The embarrassment was really starting to take over at this point and it was getting a little bit more difficult to insist, even in his own mind, that this had been the best course of action.

“Well, I wanted to talk to you. But whenever I tried to find you, you weren’t around and I couldn’t get you to come out. So I thought that, maybe, you’d catch me again if I fell. So I figured I should fall from the banister to make sure that you saw me falling and had time to react.”

By the end of the explanation, Patton couldn’t actually look at the other side anymore and was instead staring down at his purple-clad chest.

For a moment, there was silence and Patton was pretty sure that the new side was gonna think he was an idiot now, but then something miraculous happened.

Virgil’s chest started to shake, then his shoulders, then his arms, and then he couldn’t contain it anymore and laughter bloomed through the common room like a boom of thunder in a storm.

Patton looked up in shock and would later tell anyone who listened that this was the moment when he had promised himself that he would do whatever it took to protect his strange dark son for the rest of his days because Virgil’s face was lit up with the biggest grin and his eyes were squeezed shut as he laughed a full belly laughing guffaw that shook his entire body, and Patton by extension, and filled the room with one of the nicest and purest sounds Patton had ever had the joy of hearing.

He was pretty sure he had stars in his eyes as he watched the new side laugh until he couldn’t take it anymore and fell surprisingly gently, probably for Patton’s sake, onto his knees on the floor.

The laughter continued and Patton remained in the side’s shaking arms as he ended up doubling over and laughing into Patton’s shoulder.

Not that he minded.

If anything, he was delighted.

This was amazing.

Not only had he gotten the other side’s attention at last, he had also made him laugh so hard he didn’t even seem capable of controlling himself anymore.

But, eventually, the laughter faded off and the other side finally calmed down.

Virgil hadn’t really meant for any of that to happen and was reluctant to take his face away from where it was hidden against Morality’s shoulder.

So, for a moment, a just let himself take a second to really calm down and catch his breath again as the moral side remained perfectly still against him.

But he had to face everything eventually, so he finally took his head away from the side’s shoulder and only glanced at him for a moment before looking away with a blush quickly seeping over his face and ears.

“Sorry about that…”

Patton had to blink back into reality again before quickly speaking.

“Oh no! It’s fine! It was pretty funny and you have a really nice laugh so I don’t mind.”

Patton hadn’t really meant to say that last part, but it was true so that was fine.

Virgil blushed a little bit more and had to fight against the instinct in him that simply screamed to run away now that Morality was safe again.

Because the side had done all of this to talk to him again and if he left now there was a very high possibility that this would keep happening until Morality finally had the conversation he’d wanted to have in the first place.

“Right, well…anyways, what did you want to talk about, Morality?”

Patton twitched.

Apparently the new side had an impressive pair of big purple puppy eyes and it was a struggle not to just let himself squeal and pull the side back against his shoulder again.

“Oh. Right. Yeah, that. Oh! Yeah, I wanted to ask what your name was!”

Morality wiggled a little in Virgil’s arms and he would have put the side down if he wasn’t worried about him not letting go again like last time.

“Oh, it’s, um…Anxiety.”

The cheerful side blinked and looked into empty space for a moment before a look of realization came across his face.

“Oh, yeah! I remember Logan mentioning that word before. It’s like being scared and nervous about things, right?”

Patton felt it when the other side twitched a bit in what seemed like an aborted sort of flinch before he responded with his head down.

“Yeah, basically.”

The words, “kicked puppy”, repeatedly cycled through the moral side’s brain like a sad little siren.

Roman and Logan were in **so** much trouble, Patton decided then.

Because it seemed like the new side thought that he was a bad thing.

It probably really got to him when the others immediately got angry at him upon his arrival.

And having the title of Anxiety, which Patton remembered Logan calling an illness at one point, definitely wouldn’t have helped him feel better about himself.

But that wasn’t important right now.

Right now, Patton had a new friend to help feel better about themselves.

“So you keep Thomas safe from all of the bad things?”

Anxiety’s head shot up so fast his neck cracked and Patton could almost feel the whiplash second hand.

“what?”

His voice was small and breathless and it kind of made Patton want to cry, but he stayed strong and continued on with as cheerful a voice as he’d been using the entire time.

“You protect Thomas. You make him nervous and scared of the things he should avoid and can even make him directly avoid them. You’re like his knight in shining armor or something!”

And Patton was pretty proud of himself for a moment.

He was pretty sure that he’d actually said the right thing this time and Anxiety was gonna feel a bit better about himself and maybe be more willing to spend time with Patton now and they would be friends and it would be great!

But then he was met with a sight that made his heart feel like it was falling to pieces.

Tears, tainted black by the dark smudges Patton hadn’t even noticed under the other side’s eyes, fell silently from Anxiety’s wide purple eyes.

And Virgil was trying so hard to figure out what was happening, again.

He didn’t understand.

Morality was being nice to him he gave him a compliment multiple compliments he was smiling and had jumped off of a banister just to talk to him who did that what was this why was he doING THIS WHY DID HE SAY SUCH NICE THINGS WHY WAS HE ALWAYS SMILING HE HATES HIM THEY ALL DO HE’S ANXIETY HE’S BAD HE HURTS THOMAS NO MATTER HOW MUCH HE JUST WANTS TO KEEP HIM SAFE AND NOW MORALITY KNOWS WHAT HE IS AND WHAT HE DOES BUT HE SAID ITS GOOD HE THINKS HE’S GOOD  **AND HE CALLED HIM THOMAS’ KNIGHT LIKE HE WAS ACTUALLY DOING WHAT HE TRIED SO HARD TO DO AND THERE WAS SO MUCH AND TOO MUCH AND IT’S SO WEIRD AND STRANGE AND HE _JUST. CAN’T. DEAL. ANYMORE._**

And suddenly Anxiety is gone and Patton finds himself sitting on the floor beside the stairs.

Alone.


End file.
